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Any civilization that can travel between the stars will be able to build space habs more cheaply. There's no good reason to sit in the bottom of a gravity well

by keenerd 10y ago

Any civilization that can travel between the stars will be able to build space habs more cheaply. There's no good reason to sit in the bottom of a gravity well when you can build something better yourself. Unless maybe you are losing a war, being chased relentlessly across the stars and need to make a bomb shelter under a thousand miles of rock. You could offer the natives all sorts of technology, or all the precious metals you find in exchange for a few cubic kilometers deep under ground. Whatever deals you make with them don't matter anyway. They'll all be glassed in a few years when your pursuers figure out where you're hiding and begin bombardment.

SCHiM 10y ago
Or maybe they need warriors, since their race has already collectively modified itself to delete wasteful things like aggressiveness and anger. Queue the intelligent aggressive naked apes. And throw them at your problems! Or imagine making peace with the aliens, what will they think of our nearly endless collections of movies, video games and stories wherein we're slaughtering, mutilating and murdering or visitors from the sky? I wonder how _that_ is going to look once they understand what they're seeing.
- naasking 10y ago
  > Or maybe they need warriors, since their race has already collectively modified itself to delete wasteful things like aggressiveness and anger. Highly doubtful. Any trait that's collectively exhibited was adaptive and such a spefies would value it to some extent, so they wouldn't breed it out entirely. If some new sub-species found a better way and outcompeted those with this trait, then they are already better adapted by definition, and so wouldn't need this trait.
rebuilder 10y ago
I think you have to assume some kind deep-rooted psychological idiosyncracies for any expansionist species. A rational species probably wouldn't do much - it's all pointless anyways.

by keenerd 10y ago

SCHiM 10y ago

Or maybe they need warriors, since their race has already collectively modified itself to delete wasteful things like aggressiveness and anger. Queue the intelligent aggressive naked apes. And throw them at your problems! Or imagine making peace with the aliens, what will they think of our nearly endless collections of movies, video games and stories wherein we're slaughtering, mutilating and murdering or visitors from the sky? I wonder how _that_ is going to look once they understand what they're seeing.

naasking 10y ago
> Or maybe they need warriors, since their race has already collectively modified itself to delete wasteful things like aggressiveness and anger. Highly doubtful. Any trait that's collectively exhibited was adaptive and such a spefies would value it to some extent, so they wouldn't breed it out entirely. If some new sub-species found a better way and outcompeted those with this trait, then they are already better adapted by definition, and so wouldn't need this trait.

rebuilder 10y ago

I think you have to assume some kind deep-rooted psychological idiosyncracies for any expansionist species. A rational species probably wouldn't do much - it's all pointless anyways.